Käännän kieleni tai hiljenen

Niin oomme, armas, syksyyn saapuneet

syystuulet vaahterissa vaikeroivat

ja ilottomin lauluin iltaan soivat 

nyt sähkölangat kuni kanteleet.

Se oli Koskennientä.

Mitähän tälle blogille nyt tekisi, lopettaisiko vai pitäisikö taas tauon. Sellaisen epämääräisen pituisen. On vielä sanottavaa, mutta juuri nyt tuntuu olevan aika muun. Ilotonta elo ei suinkaan Veikko Anteron tapaan ole, päinvastoin. 

Jos jatkan blogissa, kirjoituksien kieli muuttuu juuri nyt takaisin suomeksi. Täällä se alkaa olla vähemmistökielen asemassa ja tunnen tarvetta käyttää ensimmäistä kieltäni. Suomen keskustelutunneilla olen herännyt huomaamaan kuinka paljon tavaraa sanavarastosta, idiomeista, värikkäistä ilmauksista on kadonnut niin minun kuin muidenkin puhekielestä. Mummon sananparsien ymppääminen puheeseen väkisin on keinotekoista, mutta jos sitä pitää pelastus- ja elvytysoperaationa niin ehkä se sallitaan. Ja suomalaisten sananlaskujen kääntäminen kansainvälisille ystäville kirvoittaa aina yhtä ihastunutta naurua ynnä ihmetystä. 

Ei siis hyvästi, kuitenkaan vaan näkemisiin. Palaan kun on asiaa.

Garden party

On a perfect sunny July day we had a garden party at T's place with a ot of wonderful stuff to eat. On the photos foccaccia and strawberries with raw chocolate, just to mention some of our treats. In a good company playing a neo-traditional Finnish outdoor game was more fun than expected.

My lakes

We had a marvellous summer holiday in Finland and Sweden. The sun, sauna, summer treats, meeting friends and family, lazy cycling and swimming. During one day we conquered 3 different bathing spots and all together we swam in 1 river, 3 lakes (several beaches) and 2 different seas. Not bad for a landlubber!

Slow summer

Oh, it is already August. The summer has been filled with lazy breakfasts, sunny brunches, outdoor luncheons, bubbly picnics, dinners, night-snacks and other delicate eatings but even bigger laziness has occurred when it comes to reporting, let alone photographing them. I will return later, when the cold winds blow outside. There are veggie restaurant reviews from Gothenburg, Moscow (still un-updated?), Lyon and Paris to come...

Now it's time to prepare snacks for tomorrow Poděbrady day trip: beetroot-feta-spinach and chickpea-curry-rucola wraps. Photos follow, or do not.

The first home-grown tomatos in my life!

This is a moment of triumph and jubilee! In spite of aphids munching the leaves, the first tomatos are ripe! There's going to be these red ones, yellow bush-tomatos (yeah, that's the botanically correct term. Not.) and then one plant that's named after my friend's and fellow gardeners baby boy. Looking forward to all of them.

Baba

Sunday day trip: short bus rip uphill from Hradčanská took us to Baba. Beautiful part of Praha 6 on a hill with magnificient views all around.  After a walk down to Podbaba, lunch at cosy restaurant Pod Juliskou with surprisingly good choices for a veggie as well. And an ice cream stall with an apt name. Not.

BBQ # infinite

Oh, I have lost count on barbeques already. Whenever the weather permits, we pack our baskets and grill and head to Stromovka. Last time we had tabbouleh (with bulgur, so much tastier than couscous) and raw cauliflower salad with grilled zucchini and sweet potatos.  NB. The bird was not on the menu.

Mlsna Kavka

"Picky jackdaw" is a veggie restaurant in Karlin, Prague 8. After a long walk a tempeh burger with fries was just what I craved for. Juicy, big and tasty. Also I had one of the best home-made lemon limonades ever. M had falafel salad, which also was good. Falafels were fresh, moist and not dry at all. The restaurant employs people rehabilitating from mental problems and disorders, so the service can sometimes be slow or shy. Even more reason to support the establishment.

Midsummer spell

Old Finnish midsummer spell tells you to pick 7 different flowers during Midsummer night and place them under your pillow. That way the future beau will appear in the dream. Even though that wasn't necessarily needed, here are the flowers.

Conquering a different Prague at Libeňský ostrov

We had a wonderfully different Midsummer day trip to allotment garden area at Libeňský ostrov. Although the gardens were locked and we only could have a glimpse of them, the area was very nice. Lazy, village-like and green. To my great delight, we bumped into a statue park all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere. After that, walking and cycling route between Vltava and Karlin took us through a huge wasteland with lush vegetation. Truly imagination-provoking landscapes.

Elephant dream

I am peeling an apple and handing it over to an elephant. The elephant (she) takes the pieces carefully with her trunk. All of a sudden I see a hand picking the apple pieces, the elephant has transformed into a girl. She tells me that she's lonely and would rather stay with other elephants. I feel so guilty. I had thought that our elephant was happy and content with us, humans. The elephant has just been too kind and gentle to complain earlier.

Restaurant Day in Prague

 The Finnish invention has of course landed also in Czech. This time we participated as restaurateurs serving Finnish pies and pasties. It was so much fun, although quite alot of work. Definitely our home restaurant will be open also in Restaurant Days to come!

My mom can be proud of the Karelian pies I baked without proper equipment and decent wood-heated oven.

Dream linguistics once more

Dreamt of a czech word nálečni. Even after hard googling can't find it used elsewhere so most likely I invented it. That happens.

Baby friend dream

My friend is having her baby any day now. I dreamt about talking with a baby who also answered me albeit being newborn. I realized bypassers would see it strange, normally newborn babies do not talk. But this one did. Baby also had a dry sense of humor already, when I was rejoicing having a facebook friend who is 2 days old the baby answered sarcastically: "I didn't have time to register to facebook yet, stupid".

On-street gardens in Berlin

Now that my eyes are open to gardens, Berlin looked like a paradise. You could see small on-street gardens everywhere. But lo and behold! Yesterday I bumped into first similar garden here in Prague on my way to dumpster diving. Yey!

Eating out in Berlin

Easter in Berlin. Mauerpark flea market, long promenades in the sun, cafés and cakes and ice cream and so on. I scouted several veggie restaurants from HappyCow list (Momos, Chaostheorie, Morgenrot, Lucky Leek, La Mano Verde, Cookies Cream), but unfortunately they either were closed or we were not hungry when they were open.

Had rooibos and chocolate cake at tiny Kaffeebar Sommarhaus near Friedrichschein park. Yummy, and the café serves also as clothes exchange spot. How convient is that!

Anita Wronski at Knaackstr. is non-veggie spot but I absolutely enjoyed the pumpkin ravioli with celery and tomato ragu. They had other innovative veggie dishes too, so actually also the meateaters had veggie dinner there. Berlin really is THE place to have breakfast, at Anita W. the menu contained 5 pages of brekkie options...

After long day out we had a quick dinner at non-veggie restaurant Merhaba. Huge appetizer plate, tasty fainting imam and so good turkish flatbread!

Meeting dream

I was in a meeting. It was so hard trying to concentrate on listening to other people talk when I could think of was "I can fly".
I kept imagining how I would fly around the conference room, out from the open window into the open sky.

Luncheon stroll

Lunch rendez-vous, vegeburger at café Na půl cesty and then a pleasant promenade in Pankrac or Podoli. They have some mighty fine villas at street Na Cementárnou, for example Vila František Lange for sale. Only 39 million czech crowns for a nice functionalist piece. One would have one's home mentioned in Wikipedia living there.

 

 I liked this rusted iron villa, it was ugly but interesting.

And as you can see, we've switched into spring shoes.

Anti-pasta

Hahaha, pun intended. Last week finally I prepared tagliatelle-ish threads from steamed zucchini and carrot, served them with tomato ragu. Meatless, naturally.

Both the carrot and zucchini were on the short side, so the end result didn't really remind of the original, but it did the job of tasting good and not making me pastacoma-tired next morning.

Food. Good.

Dinner yesterday was mango-avocado salsa with lime&chili, plus sesame-fried mozzarella. The salsa was supergood, it could use a tad more sweetness but then the mango was very soft and ripe. Mozzarella did not behave nicely on the frying pan, it tasted good but looked weird. Tofu could be better, first marinated in sesame oil etc. and then fried.

For dessert we innovated a quick non-fat version of köyhät ritarit or fattiga riddare or sweet french toast if you're more familiar with that. We toasted slices of braided egg bun vanocka, topped the sweet toast with ice cream and there you go!

About eco [-logy and -nomy]

Oh my! I just found out that I've been taking navy showers. I just thought I was shutting the shower when shampooing.

Maybe there's a rough term also for switching off the lights every single time leaving a room, even if it annoys mate :D


Sometimes I feel a bit silly collecting recyclable garbage into my hand bag when eating outdoors, eg. farmer's market or outdoor beer garden. But in the long run it is not going to be ridiculous at all, so I'll keep doing it.

And believe me, I'm certainly not writing this to boast but rather the opposite. There are innumerable tiny deeds toward saving energy, water, environment, money. I really don't know whether it's more efficient to feel excited or guilty and then start acting according to it?

Linguistics of dreams, again

I seem to have a tendency of creating words in my sleep. Last night I had a notebook full of words, the only one I can remember awake was potato. From now on, it's called daigun.

Last night I was being pleasantly annoyed by a songbird, singing in the inner yard keeping me awake. The song was sweet, melodic and extremely loud, buildings around the bird improving the acoustics. All hens nearby, be thrilled. It's spring.

Cheesy dream

My handbag was filled with cheeses, smelly, hard, soft, all kinds of cheeses. I was happy having as much cheese I could possibly want and could eat.

But that wasn't all! Near by, my mother parking a van that she used to have 20 years ago. She opened the doors and the whole van was filled with cheeses! All the brands you can imagine, huge heads of yellow cheese and cheeses wrapped in cloth. It was the cheese heaven.

Weekend food summarized

It has been so many good dishes lately, it gets hard to keep up with them. This weekend it was russian, karelian and eclectic cuisine.

On Saturday we bought cabbage-mushroom versions of homemade varenikis that russian grocery store two blocks away  sells.  Tiny pies were steamed ready in 1,5 minutes and they were sooo good with sour cream and gherkins. Because Lidl had Scandinavian week, I could have Finnish Lapland cheese "leipäjuusto" as dessert. I warmed it in oven with cream and served it with arctic cloudberry jam. 

After a stroll in Stromovka, a salad as light Sunday dinner: white cheese and pears fried in balsamic vinegar & honey, pumpkin seeds, raddish, carrots together with ciabatta and [lame] Chardonnay.